Ars gets Espresso… bongo…

A walk on the hardware wild side...

At Ars Technica, there's a review of the Espresso miniature PC from Saint Song which looks like it's a little cutie... Digital Web has posted a review of the AOpen AX64 muvvaboard, which you can find here. Over at Chick's Hardware there's a piece about Via and how it has come to be what it has come to be. The Tech Report compares and contrasts Nvidia and 3DFX technology. Hardware Zone claims it has some exclusive info about the GeForce GTS technology, in an interview the site has posted. The boys at Tom's Hardware have taken a rest from hardware and have posted a report from an Internet security conference. 2 May 2000 There's a piece over at Tech Report which must serve as a warning to those overclockers who also have pussy cats with loose bladders. But although the author considered the arrival of cat wee in his PC a total disaster at the time, it led him to build an economical PC which he's now very happy with. That must give us all pause for thought... AMD Zone is reporting the existence of a virus on an Aopen support CD. There's a review of this retail Nvidia GeForce 2GTS board over at Anandtech. The article puts the board through its paces but perhaps someone should take out the marketeer who thought up this Gladiac name, walk a few paces away from him (can't be a her, can it?) and fire. There's a review of another GeForce board, this time from Suma, over at Hardware Central. At AMD Zone the lads have got a review up of Tekram's KX-133 mobo. Meanwhile, at Ace's Hardware, there's a piece that suggests DDR memory will flood the market during the second half of this year. Sharky Extreme has updated its Intel server roadmap, which you can find beginning on this page. Finally, at JC's Pages there is an update of his Pricewatch Athlon-Pentium III availability watch. 28 April 2000 Over at Ace's Hardware there's a link to our old Japanese friends atHappy Cat, who posted some Thunderbird benchmarks and a pic of the soon-to-be famous Socket A. Gadget Squad looks at the difference between MP3 and MD in this piece. At Tom's Hardware Guide there's an extensive look at Nvidia's GeForce GTS technology. Sharky Extreme has more on the same subject which you can find here. At Anandtech, there's a completeBuyer's Guide to steer you through the ocean of hardware. Hardware Central takes a look at the Promise FastTrak 66 Pro -- which offers Raid support. Our favourite hardware site has a Power Pro processor which will shred and sift your food, but unfortunately doesn't do the same for press releases. 27 April 2000 At Tweak you can find a whole raft of guides to help make your computer sing and swing that little bit more. And here's a central point for drivers. Go to Drivers HQ if you need that essential bit of software. This place, which describes itself as the kind of web site your mother warned you about, is geek spelt large. Over at 3D GPU you can find a whole heap of information about, well, 3D GPUs. This site concerns itself with testing system security. And Soulbath is a fine site which does....err...absolutely nothing much except boggle you. Sodaplay is a top site, which has all sorts of interesting geometries to play with. Thanks to kind reader Scott Smith for providing quite a few of these links for us to look at. 26 April 2000 At Ace's Hardware there is word of an Athlon SiS 730 chipset which will start sampling in May. So we're sure to see it when we tip at the Taiwanese trade show Computex in June. At Gadget Squad, which we haven't visited before, there's a review of Sony's Memory Stick Walkman. The Ars Technica site points to a story claiming that Microsoft is attempting to disguise the fact that Win ME is based on good old DOS. According to this, DOS is disabled on ME, although it's still there. Microsoft has tried this trick in the past...tell you what, leave DOS alone boys. There's also a link at Ars T to a Scientific American article about the limits of hard drives. The lad JC keeps his eyes peeled on what's happening on Silicon Investor and points to an interesting post claiming that Coppermine's benchmarketing is fundamentally flawed. By the way, we're very happy to look at other hardware sites out there. Email us with your URL and the meat of the piece. Doesn't have to be chips either -- digital cameras, hard drives, memory, whatever... 24 April 2000 There's a post at JC's pages that looks at a Kingston press release and then shreds its conclusions. Over at Digital Web 3D there's a review of an Asus K7 mobo. AMD Zone, at this URL are reporting that Apple is considering getting m'learned friends onto Advanced Micro Devices. At Vision 4D, there's a look at the Celeron II in its 566MHz incarnation. Tom's Hardware takes a look at Intel's Webcam offering. Now if only we could get ours to perform.... Lastly, but far from leastly, Ace's Hardware has posted the second part of an excellent feature on how to improve performance of your PC. 21 April 2000 At Natural 3D Tech, there's a tweak intrepid users can make that allows Pentium IIIs CPU with 100MHz front side buses to become Pentium III 133MHz CPUs with front side buses. JC's Pages link to a Silicon Investor posting which discusses possible future AMD pricing. There's a review at Anandtech of the Asus V6800/64MB. At Ace's Hardware, there's a feature about how to get the most performance out of your AMD chip. At Ars Technica there's a roundup covering what we've seen that's new in hardware over the last month. 20 April 2000 The iXBT site has news of a fresh Via codeword for a Socket A product which has Screaming Cindy support. My goodness, everything is getting rather confusing. iXBT Labs has news of the Blade XP family of products from good old Trident. Young JC of JC's pages has pointed to this article all about Rambus Don't quite know how we missed this one, but over at Ace's Hardware there's news that US body the ITC will proceed with Rambus' complaint about Hitachi -- already covered here. Firing Squad, which you can find here, has a review of Majesty over on its site.